TGS2014: Hands-on with Space Pirate Popet, an evolution of the match-3 puzzler

Perhaps the cutest goods you could grab for playing a game at TGS were from the Space Pirate Popet stand, in the shape of little shiba inu cube plushes. I am a bit of a fiend for goodies, so I wandered over.

Assaulted by colours and animal cries, I saw what I thought to be a frantic match-3 puzzler. I was wrong though - this is much more than that.

In Space Pirate Popet you can match animals. You can also match colours. The key, however, is matching both by chaining the two.

An example: I connect three green tiles, but there are no other green tiles left. My last tile is a rabbit, and there's a blue rabbit tile next to my finger - I can use this to continue my chain.

Perhaps there is some kind of storyline in the game explaining why there are a bunch of shiba inu, rabbits, cats, and birds in space, but I certainly didn't catch it if that's the case.

It seems, from what I can surmise, you may be running some sort of space zoo, and by matching tiles you're feeding the animals all manner of Japanese food. Rice omelette anyone?

There's also a fever bar system that fills as you pop chains, resulting in a fever mode that refreshes all the tiles to make for easier combos.

Timer tiles freeze the clock, and colour tiles allow you to bridge across to any other tile where you would normally otherwise be stuck at the end of a chain.

When the timer runs out you have one final chance to make a ton of points in 10 seconds. A screen of tiles using just a couple of colours is thrown at you, and it's up to you to link as many as possible for one gigantic chain.

Space Pirate Popet is already out as a Japanese free-to-play title for Android, with plans for an iOS version and worldwide release soon.